Monday, December 7, 2009

Falling out

Fallout is no more.

Raid night three last week came and no priest signed on, so the raid leaders decided not to attempt Faction Champs.
We went to Ulduar, ostensibly to work on hard modes.

Two things happened:
1) multiple racial/religious/sexual comments continued to be made in various channels by some guildies
2) we wiped, repeatedly, on Freya trash. Trash that my old guild was aoeing with few to no deaths months and months ago.

After the 4th or 5th wipe, raid was called, and it was suggested that the raiders determine if they wanted to raid, and that if we don't focus, we'll fail.

The GM whispered me and asked if we could chat, so we hopped into a seperate vent channel to talk.
It was explained to me that Fallout had been formed from two seperate groups that had been part of a previous guild that was very progression-oriented. One officer had left the guild and formed a new one with his friends, and the GM had stayed until the end, and re-formed Fallout from the survivors of the first guild along with some recruits.

Thus, it was becoming clear to the GM (and certainly to myself as well) that the two groups were oil and water, and the other group had a number of people that were more immature and felt it was ok for them to 'joke around' with the rascist/sexual/religious comments. We discussed the future, but certainly I could see it didn't bode well for the guild. The GM indicated he was sorry for having me transfer into what had become a mess so quickly.

I signed off that night wondering about my wow future. Would I still have a guild to log on to, would I be willing to transfer to form a new guild, or should I go back to my old one? One thing was certain, given both the schism in Fallout, and the behavior of some of the members, I wasn't likely to continue in that situation for very long.

The next raid was a scheduled 10-man TOGC (heroic TOC) with the GM and a group that was mostly from 'his' group with two pug healers, a healer from the 'other' group, and a tank that had been recruited a week prior to Fallout but had butted heads with several of the 'other' members. The tank and the healer squabbled the whole night, and the healer refused to cc during the Faction Champs, forcing our other tank to switch to a druid so we could have enough cc to win. Then, after several wipes on Twin Valkyr, the healer dropped raid.

This was clearly the last straw and I was witness to a guild implosion like we read about on the forums (in fact, were I so inclined I'd be willing to bet that this particular guild drama is on public forums somewhere besides this blog).

The GM quit, making an officer/friend GM. That GM proceeded to empty the guild bank, arguing that everything in the bank was either there prior to the other group coming, or there solely because of the original group. Next, he made the recent tank recruit GM, who proceeded to kick the healer and a few members. More juicy details? My heart's not in it. I /gquit, and ended up on an alternate vent with some of the original members.

By this point the main GM, Kuervoh had apologized again to me for the mess, and offered to pay my transfer fee to try to reform a late night progression guild on another server, with a core from Fallout that were more mature. I agreed to try it, so the past couple of days have preparations for that move. Kuervoh tells me that he thinks we can have a 25-man group up and running by the end of the week, so we'll see....

Meanwhile, the leader of the other group asks me to stay but I tell him that I've already committed to moving on. I hop on my shaman still in my old guild, and end up relating some of this saga to Multa Nocte's GM, Brandorallan. He's a good guy and reminds me I'm welcome back, for which I'm thankful.

Ah, tumult!

Not sure where the ship Hinenuitepo will end up, but thanks for taking the journey with me. I'm as curious to see where I end up as you are. ;)

10 comments:

Ah, sucks to hear how things turned out. After I read your post about leaving your guild the other night, I was planning to reply but never got around to it.

Unfortunately it seems you fell for the old "grass is greener on the other side" trap. The guild I'm in sounds similar to your previous guild. I'm not an officer, but help out quite a bit and right now am topping the DPS meters almost every night. I think I'll get a good shot at Shadowmourne, but if not, that's ok too.

The people I play with are awesome, but not everyone is as serious about progression as I am. Even so we've managed to clear Heroic Beasts and Jaraxxus (beasts took 5-6 rough weeks). The raid schedule, however, is perfect for me (3 nights, 3 hrs each) and I've found that it helps keep raiding from consuming my life like it did in vanilla WoW. I

really enjoy this group of people, and every time I get frustrated with progress, I get better at coming to terms with the guild not being perfect. At this point in my WoW "career" playing with friends, being in a good group and progressing at a decent pace is enough to keep me happy with the game. I don't need to be on the bleeding edge of progress to have fun. When I've tried that in the past, I've had experiences similar to yours. The grass truly does look greener on the other side of the fence, until you're there, looking back at what you left behind.

What tiger said is really true. Fundamental, there's not much point in being on the "bleeding edge" these days. In the past, the difference was huge between the top guilds and the average Joe. Now, especially on large servers, that gap is tiny. At most you're one teir behind, whereas in the past you wouldn't even have see a raid without a guild.

So I guess it's all become "hang out with people you are cool with." Nothing replaces good friends. And from you account all the racist nonsense is a good reason to leave the guild even if it had not blown up.

Wow, that didn't last long. So, you're on the market for a new guild? Let's talk business. I'm the GM of Lëgacy, a 25 man raiding guild on Destromath US. We're probably going to shelve ToGC until we get Icecrown under control, but we're at basically the same point in progression as Fallout was, LJ down, working on Faction Champions.

We've got a rock solid tanking and healing corps, however, our DPS is marginal at times, and could use some new blood to push us further.

We raid Mondays and Wednesdays at 630 Pacific time.

Now, seeing as you'd have to server transfer to join us, if you think that's something you'd like to do, I'd run a more stringent application process to ensure the best possible chance that this would work. In addition to the usual website application and vent interview, I'd like to see some parses of some of your raids, and I'd also like to have you sit in on one of our raids in vent to ensure that our style suits you before you commit to spending real money to bring your character over.

It's just something that I'm putting on that table, if you're interested. You can find our website at http://legacy-destromath.guildlaunch.com/. We're up to date on Wowprogress and Guildox, and our parses are available for public viewing at World of Logs.

You can shoot me an email if this is something you're interested in pursueing.

Okay, I wrote this comment TWICE and blogger killed it each and every time. I have gone away to write it in WORD and then PASTE it in … I wonder if blogger is trying to tell me something. It doesn’t want my sort posting around here.

1) alas! Oh noes! That sounds rubbish and really rather stressful2) It sounds like you made the right decision not sticking around3) And ultimately, even though it went wrong, I still think it was probably time to move on from your previous guild4) I can’t imagine a DK with DPS like yours is going to be on the market for long5) So I’m sure you’ll find a home that deserves you / fits your needs6) Even though serious progress + mature atmosphere seems like an impossible dream in WoW sometimes7) If nothing else, it’s all grist to the blogging mill…8) Good luck!

Thanks guys, :)Kinda funny, really. Current status is that (not counting Ren's offer) I have a standing offer from at least 4 guilds... Multa Nocte (old guild), Fallout (one I transferred to, reformed as Internet Monsters), Sparda - one I apped to during the process of looking for a new guild, and Snickerfritz, the guild Fallout's GM and core went to. My current plan is to see how Snickerfritz does. If it's a good fit, I've made that commitment. If not, I'll probably go back to MN with my tail between my toes and see if we can build a more competitive heroic mode group there.

As far as the offer of at least taking a look, Ren, I do appreciate it. I look like a complete guild hopping ass at the moment, and I'm really not looking to do that.

On the other hand, one of my primary (absolutely unshakeable since I want to stay married) criteria is a start time after 9pm EST. So there you have it.

We'll see where this ride goes.

And Tam, thanks for stopping by. It's not as bad as it sounds, after all - this is still a game, right? :)

About Hinenuitepo

Hinenuitepo is a female Orc Death Knight in the guild Casual Corps on the Frostwolf server in the MMO World of Warcraft. This blog centers around her adventures and those of her fellow Death Knights in fighting the scions of darkness and defeating pixellated monsters.
The author works for the world's most powerful military as a real life healer.